Spiteful Healer

Chapter 231: Advanced Shield Mastery Pt.3

“Level and damage doesn’t matter, as long as I block it. It’s purely about game knowledge.” Aegis whispered to himself, taking a deep breath as the three heads of the void hydra loomed above him and the nearby rift, the center letting out a feral roar. They then proceeded to snap their fanged snouts down towards Aegis with lightning speed, forcing Aegis to flick his shield into each strike. Once he’d blocked all three, they didn’t let up and continued with more strikes, slowly pushing him back as he did his best to hold his ground with Ysilda over his right shoulder.

Within seconds he began to hear the scurrying and chittering of approaching Mosmir converging on his location from the surrounding burning city. The first began clamoring up over the rubble of the destroyed chapel walls. Initially, it was just soldiers, and Aegis briefly glanced over his shoulder to gauge their distance and speed at which they were approaching. It wasn’t long before he heard the familiar hum of void reavers charging up their beams.

There were three, aiming at him from varying locations, and he had no cover and no way to interrupt them. The only thing he was certain of was that the void beams were good at provoking the hydra.

Aegis prepared to dash forward into the hydra, timing his movement to coincide with breaks in the hydra’s three headed attacks. Once he had his timing down, he dashed forward under their recoiling long black-scaled necks, but was forced to back off and stop his plans when he spotted a black liquid seeping over the chapel floor between him and the claws of the hydra.

Just as black tendrils were preparing to shoot out from the ooze at Aegis, he quickly cast guard and jumped up on top of his shield, causing the tendrils to latch onto the underside of his shield projection. He then uneasily launched himself forward off of the projection towards the hydra, while three void beams shot out from nearby voidreavers and converged on where he’d been standing.

Aegis was barely able to land on the back of the hydra’s large bulky torso, tumbling and almost falling over off of the other side of it. The hydra didn’t appreciate this and hissed out angrily, turning its heads around without any difficulty in order to face him, as if they were on a swivel. The ooze showed fear of getting too close to the hydra and backed off, opting to begin firing its tendrils at the approaching Mosmir soldiers, who brainlessly pursued Aegis through the ooze due to the lure and their non-elite status.

Meanwhile, the void beams were curved and angled to continue to follow Aegis, despite him now being on the back of the hydra. The result was that all three beams crashed into the black scales of the void hydra and began somewhat reflecting off of it, proving to do no damage and only aggravate the elite Hydra.

It was elite, so Aegis wasn’t quite sure how it’d react, so he opted to drop to his knees on its back to stabilize himself easily, then go completely still. Two of the heads turned to face the void reavers, one looked at him curiously. His stillness was his hope to lose its attention and allow him to stay on its back, safe from the ooze, and after a long few tense seconds, it seemed to work.

The two heads facing void reavers let out a strange gurgling cry as a bulge formed in their necks. Aegis followed the bulge with his eyes as it rose up towards the mouths quickly, until finally a blast of deep purple liquid streamed out of their two heads with impressive propulsion that matched the range of the void beams, spewing out towards the reavers. Both reavers that it had shot at were forced to shift away to avoid it, whilst the liquid covered the obsidian block buildings they’d been standing on. WIthin seconds, the entire structures were dissolved by the purple acidic liquid, and the two heads began angling around to get a view on where the void reavers had teleported to.

With the ooze holding back the soldiers, and the hydra holding back the ooze and void reavers, Aegis was feeling safe, and every second that went by with him staying completely still felt like a vital progression towards success. The easy piggyback ride was short lived, however - interrupted by the sound of a deafeningly loud whale cry. The moment he heard it reach his ears he was reminded of the banshee’s he'd fought in the past, and quickly pulled Ysilda up to cover her ears and protect her from the damage.

You take 13,350 Psychic Damage.

Aegis felt his entire body vibrating from the sound, as if he was a bell being rung atop a bell tower. His muscles began to spasm and he fell forward onto the back of the hydra, desperately keeping his hands clutched over Ysilda to protect her. It seemed to work - her eyes were still closed and she winced, showing some pain from the attack, but once the whale cry ended, she was still alive and muttering the incantation. Aegis couldn’t hear her muttering, due to the lasting effects of the whale cry. He was momentarily relieved to see that they’d survived the attack, and looked up to see that the three headed hydra was also affected by it and recovering by attempting to ‘shake’ the sound out of its three heads.

The bigger issue was the source of the sound. The two [Void Ray(Elite) - Level ??] beasts that had made it into the ruins and were soaring high above the city within the open cavern were now flying towards them. As they got close to each other, Aegis briefly glimpsed up at them to see that they didn’t collide, but instead their astral starry skinned bodies seemed to merge with one another and passed through each other with ease. Aegis knew better than to stare at them longer than a second, as just glimpsing at them caused a surge of pain through his body that momentarily felt him feel dizzy.

The effects of the dizziness wore off as the ground began to rumble and shake violently, and a loud scraping sound of destruction could be heard in the distance. Aegis briefly glanced up once more to see that the Void rays were flying right towards them with incredible speed, and were dragging their gigantic spiked tails along the ground, slicing up the paved obsidian streets as they closed in on the chapel - sending chunks of obsidian, rock, dirt, and other debris into the air as everything failed to obstruct the sharp astral tails of the void rays.

The hydra, for the first time, showed fear as it too glanced at the tails converging on its location. To his luck, it looked as though the hydra would do the dodging for him and began frantically stomping out of the path of the void ray tails. It stomped out of the chapel, the Void Ooze on the ground around its feet coiling out of the hydra’s path while Aegis remained clinging onto the hydra’s back.

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“Shit.” Aegis realized it late that the hydra was about to take him and Ysilda out of range of the rift in order to dodge the tails of the void rays - one tail coming from the left, the other from the right. Aegis quickly got his footing on the hydra’s back, put Ysilda back over his shoulder, then jumped forward off the back of the hydra towards the tails.

To his relief, the ooze, too, had cleared out of the area in fear of the incoming tails. The closer they got, the bigger the tails appeared - it looked as though two jumbo jets were cutting through the earth and soaring towards him at rapid speed, with no signs of slowing down.

The attacks were too large to dodge - the only way to dodge would result in Ysilda being taken out of range of the rift. Aegis resisted the urge to look up at the astral bodies of the void rays soaring above, the source of the tails. Instead, he dug his feet in and took a deep breath.

As long as I block it with my shield, it does no damage.” Aegis reminded himself, but the size of the attack and the force it was bringing with it as it tore up the ground of the city was beyond intimidating.

“No way is he going to block those, is he?” Hae-won asked with disbelief, sitting on the edge of her seat as she watched alongside Aegis’ audience of now 1.3 million viewers.

“He’s got no choice.” Baffo replied, also on the edge of his seat as he and Uggard watched the broadcast with wide eyes.

“Fuck me.” Aegis took a deep breath, dug his feet into the floor of the chapel, and held his shield up. The ground shook violently due to the tails, but he kept his footing and gritted his teeth, clenching all of his muscles. When the tail was just a few meters away, Aegis involuntarily shouted out a battle cry to himself to help psych himself up. When it connected, he could no longer hear his own voice due to the loud sounds of destruction being caused by the tails, but he felt the most painful, violent force of destruction to ever hit his shield.

Due to the empowerment of the dungeon options, his footing held and he took zero damage. The tails made a loud metallic clanging sound as they clashed with the iron shield he was given, their path being impeded by Aegis to the point that the tails recoiled backward and were flung up into the air, trailing behind the void rays as they continued to soar beyond the rift overhead.

First, the overwhelming sensation of having his arm shattered into a million pieces faded. Then, the chunks of obsidian and other debris and dust fell from the sky all around Aegis. The other void creatures that had fled from the tails were some distance away, giving Aegis a few moments to recover from the attacks. He looked around the take in his surroundings and made sure he was safe to catch his breath and saw nothing but the settling of debris all around him and the rift.

Then, he turned to Ysilda to make sure she was okay, still muttering the incantation and channeling holy energy into the rift. Afterwards, he looked back at the surrounding rubble and saw something odd - the amount of broken obsidian blocks somehow seemed to have increased in the few seconds he’d been looking away. It took Aegis a second to register this, and whether he was seeing things or not, but then it clicked as he recalled the lure debuffs that he had.

“Mimics.” Aegis sighed, and the moment he had, he watched as several obsidian debris blocks grew long black tendrils and used them as legs to scurry forward, while black mouths filled with razor sharp white teeth formed on random locations, varying from block to block. They let out horrendous hissing sounds as they closed in, whipping their tendrils out at Aegis in an attempt to grapple him.

He reacted quickly by raising his shield up to block two charging at him from the left, and making use of guard to block a third on his right. They were relentless and made several more strikes that he was able to block, but at the same time Aegis heard the sound of the hydra stomping back towards him, alongside the scurrying of Mosmir soldiers.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the ooze got back as well, and his mind worked overtime to concoct a method of using the other void creatures to minimize the aggression of the mimics - this was interrupted by a large black ball rising up out of the center of the rift. The center of the ball opened up to reveal a large white eyeball, and multiple glowing eyestalks then extended out of the top of its head. [Void Beholder(ELITE) - Level ??].

“Oh come on.” Aegis whimpered as he saw it turn all of its eyestalks to face him, and a large mouth formed below the eye with a big grin.

“It’s finished!” Ysilda declared loudly, opening her eyes as she remained hanging over Aegis' shoulder.

“Then close it!” Aegis shouted with excitement as the eyestalks began to glow, aimed at him as he frantically blocked more strikes from the mimics.

“If I close it now, these creatures will be stuck on this side of the rift! We must use the lures on our bodies to take them back to their realm. Only then wi-”

“Yeah yeah okay I got it.” Aegis cut her off in annoyance, and with no hesitation he dashed forward into the black rift of wild whipping energy, now encapsulated by holy light that was mixing in with the dark magic. Just as Aegis passed through the rift, the beholder shot out several beams at where he’d been standing, forcing the mimics away to avoid getting hit in the crossfire. The eyebeams missed Aegis as he passed through the rift and was warped into the realm of endless void.

His body began to warp and distort. As Aegis tried to find a footing after stepping through the rift, he found none. They were suddenly drifting through the air, weightlessly, away from the rift that seemed to be floating in the middle of nothingness. There was light, from multiple sources of far off stars that gave an ever present sense of illumination. Everything alive and moving around them was visible, but it was otherwise a black space surrounded by distant stars.

The space around the rift was filled with various creatures that had been attracted to Aegis’ lures and were all swimming through the space towards him.

Aegis opened his mouth and attempted to speak to Ysilda, but no sound came out. The only sound Aegis could hear was that of distant whale-like cries, coming from Void Rays that were flying towards them through the void space, far off in the distance much to his relief.

The closest enemy Aegis had to worry about was a void serpent, slithering through the void towards him from below as it moved quickly through the weightless sky, bearing its fangs up at him. Aegis quickly cast guard to project his shield under his feet, then propelled himself forward off of the projection to take himself out of the path of the serpent as it lunged at him, narrowly avoiding the strike. Simultaneously, Aegis turned back towards the rift as he caught out of the corner of his eye that the beholder had come back through it and was aiming its eyestalks at him.

He knew he’d take no damage from the attacks as long as he blocked them, but he also knew that the beholder wasn’t dangerous due to its damage, but it's status effects. As multiple colored eye stalks began to charge up, Aegis frantically created a new shield projection under his feet and bent his knees into it, timing a jump off of the projection at the last second before the stalks fired to avoid the beams.

As a result, the beams shot past him and Ysilda and hit the serpent who was swerving around behind Aegis and preparing to lunge at him again from behind. The Serpent froze, but Aegis hadn’t time to fully grasp what had happened to it as he spotted three more copies of his shield projection suddenly appear out of the rift and begin soaring towards him with tiny tendrils wriggling out of the sides, revealing them to be mimics. Luckily, with Ysilda freed up from her incantation, she was able to fire bolts of holy light out at the mimics and knock them away, freeing up Aegis to focus solely on avoiding the eye beams from the beholder which were quickly charging up again.

Another set of beams fired at Aegis, he dodged them, then saw that the void reavers from outside of the rift were now teleporting around him, floating in the void space around him in random locations. There was nowhere to hide, no cover, and no way to out run the beams and dodge the beholder at the same time.

Aegis frantically pointed out the voidreaver to Ysilda and she nodded, spinning around to shoot at them with one hand while holding onto the back of Aegis’ armor with the other so as to not get separated as the two floated together weightlessly through the space.

It worked - her smite casts were enough to prevent the void reavers from finishing their channels and casting void beams onto Aegis. He dodged another set of beams from the beholder, then saw two large puddles of void ooze seeping through the rift, followed by the three headed void hydra.

Aegis took a deep breath upon seeing this - he knew now that the only thing left was the void rays, but they were absolutely surrounded and being attacked from all sides. It took all of the focus he could muster to continue to block and dodge the attacks of all of the nearby enemies. The hydra throats began to bulge as they built up acid in their mouths, this time the three heads aimed at Aegis.

The void reavers continued to try and take aim, interrupted repeatedly by Ysilda. The Beholder continued to charge up eyestalks, focusing Aegis to use his guard to keep propelling himself away. The mimics continued to wriggle through the endless void towards him with their tendrils, repeatedly disguising themselves as different objects to throw Aegis off, unsuccessfully. As they closed in, he used his shield to block their black tendrils that lashed out at him in between avoiding eye beams.

Suddenly, though, the eye beams stopped. The mimics pulled back their tendrils and started frantically swimming away in fear, and the void hydra swallowed the bulge, not managing to spew out any acid. The void reavers started shifting away, and the void serpent, the moment it regained mobility, began to slither through the space in terror.

Everything around them, including the beholder, was fleeing from them in the same direction. Naturally, seeing this, Aegis slowly turned his head up into the direction of the void around them, to see what they were fleeing from. He wished he hadn’t.

At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at - there was simply a large section of the space around him where no light was coming from. It took him a while to realize that something was there, blocking the light in that direction, and it was approaching rapidly. He saw Ysilda staring at it with her jaw dropped, a look of absolute terror on her face.

Then, as Aegis looked more closely, he saw it - a large black skeletal face was soaring towards them, giving off a strange, deep groaning sound. It had a single eye near the top of its strangely shaped skeletal head. It lacked a lower jaw, but not a lower lip as the rim of its mouth could be vaguely seen, due to the edge of its body being outlined by the glowing stars behind it that illuminated its silhouette.

There were various writhing tendrils sticking out from its body from behind its head, but Aegis couldn’t see much of the rest of its body due to the size of its head and the fact that it was approaching them head on. Then, he saw as large claws began to extend out from its torso hidden behind its head. The claws were not black like the rest of it’s body, but instead blood red, and thanks to them, Aegis was given perspective to just how large the approaching creature actually was.

Glancing back briefly to Ysilda, he saw her mouthing something frantically to Aegis while tugging on his armor and pointing back towards the rift. He couldn’t fully grasp what she’d mouthed, but as he recalled his list of lure debuffs, he remembered one creature that hadn’t been seen yet that matched what she’d mouthed - Ilmian. When he turned back towards the rift, he saw the tail end of the two Void rays swimming through it, away from the Ilmaim. That was it, Aegis thought - all the dangerous creatures had come back through the rift.

Ysilda nodded, and the two began desperately swimming through the space back to where the rift was. However, despite their best efforts, they were only drifting further away - being pulled by some unseen force in the direction of the approaching Ilmian. Aegis glanced back in its direction to see it. Not only was it soaring towards them rapidly, it became clearer to him just how massive this creature was.

Desperation sank in as he saw the unfathomably large enemy closing on, and he quickly cast guard to propel them forward towards the rift. It worked for a moment, but then they were sucked back to the guard projection he’d just launched them off of.

The force behind the Ilmiam’s pulling quickly escalated, to the point where propelling off of the shields was completely pointless, the projection was serving only to stop them from being pulled closer to the Ilmiam.

Aegis stopped and stood on one of his projections, now roughly 8 meters from the writhing rift. It looked so close, but at the same time so far. Ysilda remained clinging desperately to his back, wrapping her arms around him as he thought of a solution. The only thing that came to mind was the projections, but jumping wouldn’t work. Then it clicked in his head - he reached his hands out up towards the rift, and the moment he canceled the projection he was using for footing, he recast guard where his hands were and grabbed it.

The pulling force of Ilmiam quickly yanked his legs away from the projection, but he had two seconds to pull himself forward using his arms, and did exactly that, quickly standing up on the projection, then extending his arms and casting another one in his hands.

He repeated this as fast as he could, several times, while avoiding looking back at the Ilmian as he felt its presence closing in on them. All he had to do was see the look on Ysilda’s face to get a sense for just how close the creature had gotten to them by the time Aegis reached the rift and pulled himself and Ysilda through it.

The moment he had, his body shimmered, and the two collapsed onto the ground of the chapel - sound returning to their ears. Immediately upon landing on solid ground, Ysilda spun around and waved her hands at the rift with a flash of holy light emanating from them. In an instant, the rift was pulled in onto itself and absorbed in a ball of light, then disappeared.

Quest Complete!

Aegis didn’t have time to recover, or say anything to Ysilda. Immediately upon seeing the message pop up in his peripheral vision, his body was ejected from the dungeon and he found himself standing in front of the archway, back in the basement of the training hall of Kordas.

He breathed heavily, eying his stamina to see that it had nearly been completely emptied, then looked up and saw Baffo and Uggard rushing towards him excitedly. Before they could get to him, though, another message popped up on his screen.

Congratulations! You have advanced from Shield Mastery(Intermediate): 150 to Shield Mastery(Advanced): 151. You may now level this skill up to a maximum of 300.

Your use of the Shield Mastery skill has unlocked the Shield Mastery ability: [Reflect],

The following Shield Mastery abilities have been changed:

[Shieldwall] -> [Greater Shieldwall]

[Guard] -> [Greater Guard]

[Shield Bash] -> [Shield Slam]